Bernard Schoenburg: Hynes not conceding votes from veterans

Monday

Nov 30, 2009 at 12:01 AMNov 30, 2009 at 2:26 PM

Gov. Pat Quinn has made veterans’ issues a signature of his tenure in both his current office and his years as lieutenant governor. So perhaps it was no surprise that a fellow Democrat who wants his office, Comptroller Dan Hynes, held a Springfield news event featuring veterans last week.

Bernard Schoenburg

Gov. Pat Quinn has made veterans’ issues a signature of his tenure in both his current office and his years as lieutenant governor. So perhaps it was no surprise that a fellow Democrat who wants his office, Comptroller Dan Hynes, held a Springfield news event featuring veterans last week.

Hynes came to Cafe Moxo, where his campaign had assembled a group of central Illinois veterans. Hynes listened to their concerns — mostly about jobs and health care — and met with reporters to discuss his proposal to have Illinois public colleges and universities give applications from veterans priority in the admissions process.

Quinn, 60, was drafted when he finished college, but wasn’t allowed into the military because of a bad knee and high blood pressure.

Having recently asked Quinn why he didn’t serve, I thought it fair to ask Hynes, 41, if he ever considered joining up.

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I went right from high school to college, right from college to law school.

“I have the utmost respect for those who decide to serve in the military,” Hynes added. “We are a voluntary military in this country, and I think it’s something that we all have an appreciation for — those who protect our country, those who put their lives on the line for our democracy, for our freedom, for our safety.”

Hynes was accompanied at the event by a friend since childhood, Chicago native Dan Wagner, now of Maryland. Wagner, who stood up at Hynes’ wedding, attended the Naval Academy, and served in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Marines.

He was wounded in Iraq in 2005, when shrapnel from a mortar went through his neck, but he has recovered, remains in the Marine Reserves, and expects another tour of duty in Afghanistan.

“When I came back from being wounded in Iraq, Dan Hynes was the first person at my bedside at Bethesda,” Wagner told the assembled vets as reporters listened in. “I didn’t know he was going to be there. Didn’t have to be there. He was the kind of person who’s going to do that for the veterans that are here, whether they’re friends of his or not. That’s just the kind of man he is.”

Hynes, who said Wagner was just on a visit and paid his own way to Illinois, told reporters that Wagner almost died, and proved an “unbelievably strong individual” who “walked me around to the other wounded warriors” at the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda.

“The stories, and the experiences that they shared were absolutely heart-wrenching,” Hynes said. “It’s those experiences that we all have to remember, that are occurring every day. … Those of us in government need to make sure that our veterans are given what they are promised.”

Hynes said he doesn’t question Quinn’s commitment to veterans.

“I just think that it’s important that whoever the next governor is, that there is a commitment there that allows our veterans to access the benefits and programs and opportunities that are afforded them, but they just don’t know how to access.

“It’s that notion of advocacy and just constant focus on our veterans that I am committed to.”

Tusk brings home winner

What do former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg have in common?

Well, they run expensive campaigns, and their careers have been moved along by Bradley Tusk.

Tusk, who was 29 when he was imported from New York by Blagojevich in 2003 to become deputy governor of Illinois, ran Bloomberg’s recent re-election campaign.

“Mr. Tusk’s high level of organization, and his demand for corporate-style accountability, earned him admiration and occasional resentment within the campaign,” said a New York Times article Nov. 4, a day after Bloomberg won a third term. “He kept meticulous checklists and spreadsheets on a dozen topics at a time, and sought daily, sometimes hourly, updates from staff members.

“Over the summer, he ordered staff members to work until 8 every night. They were unhappy and let him know it. He refused to back down, worried the large staff was becoming complacent. Yet the campaign rarely, if ever, missed an internal deadline, and it committed few serious missteps.”

Tusk had worked for Bloomberg and U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., before joining the Blagojevich administration. He left Illinois to go back to New York in late 2006, and he seems to have avoided being tainted by the allegations of wrongdoing Blagojevich now faces.

The New York Times article said Tusk had been “eager to return to politics” and left Lehman Brothers to join the campaign.

Bloomberg’s defeat of William Thompson Jr., the city’s first black comptroller, was tough in part because Bloomberg had to get the city council last fall to extend term limits for the mayor’s office. Bloomberg also worried about a possible challenge from U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.

Tusk, the Times said, had daily meetings “about how to knock Mr. Weiner out of the race, unleashing a two-pronged attack: making on-the-record statements belittling his record and encouraging embarrassing articles in the New York dailies. Negative articles began appearing, the most colorful of which purported to show that Mr. Weiner had skipped votes in Congress to play hockey in Manhattan.”

Weiner announced last May that he would not run for mayor, and the article said that Tusk and Howard Wolfson, the “high-profile attack dog” who spoke for the Bloomberg campaign, split an $85 steak at a celebratory dinner.

Oddly, it was in November of 2007 — after Tusk had left the Blagojevich team — that Blagojevich made a PR blunder by flying to Chicago to attend a Chicago Blackhawks hockey game while the House was voting down a Blagojevich-backed bill to help mass transit in Chicago.

Tusk, who didn’t respond to a recent call to Bloomberg campaign headquarters, may be best remembered to those of us watching government from beyond the inner circle as the guy who almost never wore a tie and who often ducked into corners of rooms to have his thumbs work quickly over the keyboard of his BlackBerry or similar device.

When he left Illinois, he said he was particularly proud of the All Kids insurance program and open road tolling on the state’s tollways.

But Tusk also said at the time he was disappointed that Blagojevich’s program to allow Illinoisans to import cheaper drugs from out of the country — a program deemed against federal rules — hadn’t been widely used.

“You can shoot for the moon, try to do a lot of stuff, knowing that you can’t achieve all of it,” Tusk said at the time. “Or, you can aim low, clearly achieve every single thing you set out to do, but not achieve very much at the end of the day. I think the governor’s style is to shoot the for moon, and as a result he’s helped a lot of people.”

Time and indictments haven’t served Blagojevich’s image quite so well. Blagojevich’s trial next year will tell more of that lasting legacy.

State Journal-Register political columnist Bernard Schoenburg can be reached at (217) 788-1540 or bernard.schoenburg@sj-r.com.